It was the bold supercilium — the stripe above the eye — and the rusty-brown scalloped feathers fading into the underbelly that helped identify the bird in a Najafgarh lake as a sharp-tailed sandpiper, rather than the similar-looking pectoral sandpiper.
On Sunday, a rare sighting that has excited ornithologists: only the fifth recorded sighting of the species in India-NCR and the country as a whole in 150 years.
Akshit Dua, an NCR-based birder who has documented the sharp-tailed sandpiper in the fields, actively foraging amid a flock of common sandpipers and wood sandpipers, said the crown features including the chestnut crown, along with the distinctive eye-ring, the white stripe above the eye, rufous-brown upperparts and rusty-brown scalloped feathers with diffused breast streaks were diagnostic.
Documents show the first was a male in Gilgit in 1890, a female in Vandai in Tamil Nadu in 1915, an unconfirmed record in Arunachal’s Sangti Valley near Dirang in 2004, and a photographed individual at the Nalsarovar marshland on September 29, 2022.
The sharp-tailed sandpiper breeds in northern Siberia, in an area that extends from the Taymyr Peninsula to Chaun Bay in the Arctic Ocean southeastward to the Kolyma region, and migrates south over East Asia to non-breeding grounds in Australia and New Zealand. Smaller numbers fly to Melanesia, a cluster of islands in the southwestern Pacific, between New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east.
The species is, therefore, an exceptionally uncommon visitor to India. “The species never flies south over Kashmir, which is very rare in India,” naturalist Ramakumar, who with the Bombay Natural History Society, said. The sighting of the sharp-tailed sandpiper is remarkable not just because it is an uncommon visitor to the Delhi-NCR region, but because it highlights its extraordinary biodiversity that persists in wetlands around our cities.
Those places, he said, are often dismissed as vast tracts of vacant land, but they are incredibly important habitats for migratory birds and a whole range of other species.
Overall, sharp-tailed sandpiper populations are in decline. A conservation assessment in 2025 found that its population has declined by about 45% over three generations of about 33 years, and listed habitat loss and degradation among the major threats to the species, and it is now categorized as ‘vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red List.
The sharp-tailed sandpiper forages in both coastal and inland wetlands, in freshwater and hypersaline habitats. It feeds on seeds, worms, molluscs, crustaceans, and insects after rainfall, which it obtains from pastures and in the shallow water edges of wetlands.
Around the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean peninsula, an important stopover region on the annual migration route of the bird, coastal development, conversion of mudflats to residential, industrial and agricultural development, pollution, altered sediment flows, and rise in sea levels are adding pressure. In Australia, droughts and reduced areas of inland wetlands are major concerns.
The Najafgarh bird was not alone. A rustic bunting was also spotted at the wetland a few days earlier, another rare sighting in the region, NCR birder Yatin Verma said.
Gargi, a veterinarian with the Haryana government and a birder who has been visiting the Najafgarh lake for years, said the species sees active migration in August-September, and again in March. Birds also take time to shed their habits before embarking on their return and non-breeding grounds, he said.
While temporarily flooded fields in the broader Central Asian Flyway are important stopover grounds for waders and other passage migrants in the monsoon, Kumar said Najafgarh, on the broader Central Asian Flyway, offers a diversity of habitats for the wetland.